


The Lantean Heart

by margarks



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margarks/pseuds/margarks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla... they were the <i>heart</i> of Atlantis, the heart of this expedition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lantean Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the livejournal choc_fic comm prompt: _Stargate: Atlantis, Team (Gen): The difference - In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity - Ambrose Bierce_
> 
> Thanks to apple_pi for the beta.

From the moment Jennifer had arrived on Atlantis she'd known the importance of the senior staff. Who didn't? But it wasn't until she joined them, until Carson... it wasn't until she saw them up close and personal that she realized that John's team was more than just the commanding staff of the Atlantis expedition.

John, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla... they were the _heart_ of Atlantis, the heart of this expedition. Without them, Atlantis would cease to be. No matter what anyone else thought, Jennifer knew the truth.

She remembered an old quote by some journalist in the 1800s. It was something about the human heart being made up of four animals: a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale. She found it profoundly appropriate.

Teyla, of course, would be the nightingale. Not only was her speaking voice musical, but Jennifer had heard stories from some of the other expedition members about the night that Teyla's friend Charin had died. She had a feeling that Teyla's voice was more than just musical when she put that kind of emotion behind it. She was also the most graceful of the four, the one with the lightest touch. But beyond the obvious comparisons, there was a... melancholy about Teyla, too, that Jennifer associated with the nightingale; probably because she was forced to analyze Keats' _Ode to a Nightingale_ one too many times in college.

She didn't know what it was, but it had hung around Teyla's shoulders since long before Jennifer had been promoted to CMO. She thought maybe it was the loss of her father. Jennifer knew how that would have affected her. But she didn't know for sure and she'd never ask. She had a feeling that Teyla didn't even realize that the layer of serenity she surrounded herself with had a few cracks in it.

Now Ronon, he had to be the tiger. She blushed thinking about how much time she spent watching him. The way he moved, fluid and predatory at the same time. She couldn't imagine what it had been like for him. On the run for seven years, completely alone, relying on no one and nothing but himself. Even though he'd been the hunted, Jennifer couldn't help picturing him as the hunter. There was something... savage about him. She could almost see him out in the wild, solitary and beautiful.

He was fiercely protective, too, and territorial when it came to Atlantis and his team.

She didn't have to think too hard about Rodney's place on the team. He was the pig, but not for the reasons Ronon or John might have thought. He did have a tendency to eat like one, but it was his intelligence that Jennifer thought of when she compared the man to the animal. Most people didn't know it but pigs were one of the smartest domesticated animals on the earth. Though Rodney didn't have too many social graces, he was a genius. And he was just as fierce in his protection and his love for his teammates as any of the others, even if he didn't exactly know how to show it.

She smiled when she thought of John. She knew that he would most definitely not enjoy being compared to an ass, but even that was appropriate. Asses were known as "beasts of burden" and though John couldn't be called that in the traditional sense, he had his own burdens to bear. He carried the weight of their expedition on his shoulders like a heavy mantle. And in her eyes, he seemed to trudge along day in and day out with hardly a complaint as the weight of all their lives almost broke his back. She supposed that it had something to do with his other ass-like characteristic.

He was just too damn stubborn to ever give up. He'd taken on the responsibility of keeping the expedition alive and intact the moment Sumner had died, and that had been that.

Jennifer wished that she could do something for him, for all of them, to try to ease the responsibility they all held. But even as she tried, her own duties pulled at her. She supposed that maybe it was the same for everyone on Atlantis. They all had their own burdens to bear. It was just that John and his team were the only ones capable, the only ones strong enough, to take up the cross that was the entire Atlantis expedition itself.

THE END.


End file.
